Whale: Shortlisted for the International Booker Prize

Reviews

Kacey Compton

Its hard to say much more without giving away spoilers! Their lives are guided by fate, and their futures are entwined with those of an ugly old crone and her one-eyed daughter. This is absolutely one of my all-time favorite reads.

Unique and absorbing, I would recommend this book to everyone. The Whale, which she spots breaching the surface of the wide ocean as she begins this new life, is used symbolically throughout the story to represent her inner strength and constant desire for more, bigger, better. Men are not demonized, it is simply that a name is not necessary or important to the furthering of the story. This is a stunning translation and a story that will remain with me for a long time.

Later in the novel, surprising events occur which entirely change the tone, in such a way that feels like a commentary on society's expectations of men and women, which is a theme i always love reading about. Geumbok is a beautiful, strong-willed and intelligent woman who escapes from a traumatic childhood of loss, and is hurled into the big wide world. In Whale, we follow the eventful lives of Geumbok and, later, her daughter Chunhui.

The characters are so well formed that they feel real and I found myself genuinely feeling for them, and wanting good things to happen to them. I also got the feeling that being named is the narrators way of showing the most significant and beloved men in their lives. I loved this book. It borders on fantastical at times but reads less like fantasy and more like a fairy tale, a truly epic novel and so wonderful well translated!

There's a huge emphasis on female strength and power throughout and, while there are some memorable and loveable male characters, many of the men featuring throughout the novel lack even the basic dignity of a name, and instead are referred to as the fishmonger, the lumberjack, the truck driver, and so on. This combined with her intelligence makes her a fantastic entrepreneur and throughout her life she builds various majorly successful businesses from the ground up. Chunhui, her daughter, is vastly different from her mother and resembles more her father, built like a house and seemingly of sub-par intelligence.

Mute, but with the ability to converse with Jumbo the elephant, Chunhui lives a simple life, following the paths she is guided down by those raising her. A beautiful picture of life in Korea and how their society, and circumstances, changed so drastically over the course of their lives.